Vintage Surfboard Rehabilitation: A Documentary in Words and Images (Part II — Replace a T-band Stringer)
In Part I, I explored some background on Dewey Weber Surf Boards, the history of the brand in New England, and the design of the Weber Feather. In Part II, I tear into the tail of the BLACK SHEEP to replace a section of the t-band stringer. In Part III, I will explore one’s options for replacing a W.A.V.E. Set fin and document the production of my own reproduction fin.
In for a Penny…
I had been thinking I’d like to have a pintail longboard in my quiver because they can be a bit more responsive in turns and a little better in the bigger stuff. (There’s a reason every surfer trying to paddle over the 35' Jaws clean-up set on the left is riding a pintail gun.)
I wasn’t thinking Weber, and I wasn’t actually in the market for a board when opportunity struck: an all-original Weber Feather with significant water staining, a golf ball-sized hole on the deck, a broken W.A.V.E. Set fin ($150 to replace), and a really, really nasty cavity right at the pin. I picked it up for next to nothing, thinking I’d swap in a modern fin box, clean up the tail, patch up the big stuff and dozens of smaller issues, hang it in the den, and surf it on occasion. In for a penny…
I strapped the Weber Feather on my roof and raced home to give it a more thorough inspection. I was too excited about the prospect of managing a couple dozen minor dings and a few more serious punctures. I grabbed my grinder and ripped into the dings on the deck before realizing that I was really in for a long-haul recovery. The stringer was completely shot from at least the back of the fin box to the tail. I knew I needed to handle two delaminations, a good-sized one right over the Weber Feather logo and a smaller one a few inches back.
As the photos show, his board needed work. But look at that patina. And the glass is hard as a rock, at least where it isn’t dinged or mangled.
I handle all of my ding repair, and I’ve done a little nose reconstruction, rail repair, and fin box work. I’ve also hotcoated/glosscoated a couple boards after a significant quantity of ding repairs. But all of that is work I’d consider pretty run-of-the-mill. This Feather recovery is orders of magnitude more challenging.
Fortunately for me, there’s this little thing called the Internet, where one can sort of learn how to do almost anything. And I needed to learn a lot!
- How does one replace a 1.5" deep gouge in the deck?
- What’s the best way to handle a deck delamination that traverses the stringer?
- Is it possible to replace part of a stringer? What’s the penalty in terms of susceptibility to future breakage?
- How might one replace a faded original logo with one created in Photoshop?
- What’s the best approach to handling a W.A.V.E. Set fin box when the box is not cracked/leaking but the fin is broken? Remove? Keep?
- Assuming the fin box stays, what are one’s options on a fin?
The list of sites I consulted is quite long, but much of the information I found helpful was contained in three distinct places: the forums at Swaylocks, NYNJSurf forums, and ClassicBingSurfboards.
I also drove the board up to one of our local shops, Maine Surfer’s Union, and consulted with Charlie about getting a pro to handle the stringer repair and possible fin box replacement. At the time, I thought the rot was confined to the back 4" of the board and was looking at simply swapping in a modern fin box.
Charlie, sensing (rightly) that this stringer thingie could unravel like a loose thread on a sweater, gently encouraged me to clean up the tail, dry out the board, glass in some wood, and call it a day. He also confirmed my sense that the W.A.V.E. Set box was in great shape, with good glass all around. Charlie wondered why I’d replace the vintage box when I could find a reproduction fin? Keep the board as close to original as possible. He walked away from a job, but he also walked away from work.
I’m glad he did! Keeping the board in house meant I spent next to nothing on the repairs — a little balsa, some glass cloth, a bucket of resin. (Including the volan fin I bought, the repair bill is well under $50 so far. Forced to dig into the stringer problem myself, I have also developed considerably more confidence in my ability to handle board repair — not that I’m efficient or particularly good.
… In for a Pound
What I saved in money by handling repairs in the shed and back yard, I made up for in time on task. But these are off-hour hours, and they come in small increments: 15 minutes here, an hour there.
Using my grinder, I quickly opened up some drainage/evaporation slits in the deck. A series of roughly 4" long cuts through the glass on either side of the stringer made it possible to pop up some glass and expose the t-band, helping me diagnose the extent of water damage to the stringer and enabling the wet (but still solid) wood to dry out. I then moved the board to the den, where the wood stove and low humidity of a Maine autumn could work out the moisture.
The real problem with the board, though, was that pesky rotten tail. As I worked my way up the board, slicing the glass away from the stringer section, I found more and more wet, rotted balsa pulp. The black foam was solid, as was the white foam making up the board itself. But roughly 18" of t-band wood was completely shot. I carefully scraped out the wet mess, leaving long 1/8" grooves on either side of the black foam.
UNCLE!! at NYNJSurf Forums, one of my sources for basic guidance, documented his removal of a W.A.V.E. Set fin box from a vintage G&S and installation of a modern box. One of his images reveals that G&S used duct tape to cover the hole that an overzealous crank of the W.A.V.E. Set screws might create. He also points out the deck foam staining over the screw locations on that Model SS. Not so funny stuff.
This information sent me to the deck of the Feather, with orders to ferret out any signs that fin box leakage would need to be addressed. Thankfully, I saw no evidence that the box itself had failed.
As I dug out wood pulp, then carefully (oh, so carefully!) pried the black foam from the board, it became clear to me that duct tape was almost certainly part of the official installation instructions for the W.A.V.E. Set fin box.
How far should one go to address this stuff? I reminded myself that this is not ever going to be my main board and that the board has been surfed for more than 40 years with a duct tape seal. I elected to gingerly clean out the grime and glass everything in nice and tight.
Notice that small, square cavity in front of the duct tape. Curious. It provides stability for the box, enabling it to handle some impact forces. I could imagine someone using it to smuggle diamonds or some other small, valuable contraband through customs. The enterprising smuggler could have cut out the glass, inserted the goods, glassed it, and thrown on some wax. Hmm.
After assessing the stringer damage and cutting out the black foam, I scoured the Internet for help on stringer replacement. There are a number of sites that document stringer repair as part of surfboard restoration. It looks like a daunting project.
- David Platt’s Restoration of a Gordon Woods classic will send almost anyone running away from a restoration job and into the arms of a pro.
- Tom at Classic Bing Surfboards documents glass-off restorations of a couple Bing boards, one of which included a serious, wide balsa stringer replacement.
Looking at these projects made my stringer replacement task seem pretty easy, at least relative to the work of surfboard restoration. I didn’t want to strip the glass and re-build the Feather from the foam up. I just needed to reconstruct about 18" of t-band, shape the contours to match the board’s rocker, glue it all together, and re-glass the section.
Turning again to Swaylocks, I learned about White Gorilla Glue, a water-activated, expanding, waterproof adhesive. At my local crafts supply store, I picked up a couple lengths of 1/8" balsa and some Gorilla Glue. Using the carefully extracted black foam from the t-band as a template, I cut the balsa to reproduce the rocker template of the Feather’s tail. The foam in the pin was beyond recovery, so I used some cast off foam I got from Charlie at Maine Surfer’s Union and shaped a white-foam section at the end.
I sandwiched the foam between my two 1/8" balsa sections and mated it all with Gorilla Glue. Not realizing just how expansive and foam-like the Gorilla Glue would be, I used a bit too much glue, which created something of a foamy mess requiring a good bit of shaving and scraping once it all dried. I’m really happy with the construction.
I used a “proprietary” resin-filler blend developed using Herb’s diaper mix. (Thanks, Herb and Swaylocks!) The filler enabled me to accommodate the highly imperfect stringer outline without needing to cut through the glass on the deck and hull. I was not interested in building a super jig to hold the board in place to prevent twisting, and I didn’t want to break the fin box loose from its moorings.
I was also able to really goop my blend over the fin box and into whatever nooks and crannies existed between the box and the foam. Functioning like a mix of microballoons and shredded cloth fibers, the blend also bonded foam to wood. My hope is that this mix will make the duct tape over the fin box screw holes irrelevant.
Below are a couple photos of the repaired stringer section. I used black acrylic paint to match the black foam color all the way back to the pin. I’m not glassing the tail stringer section until the entire board is ready for glassing. I’d give myself a B-/B on my first-ever effort at touching a surfboard stringer.
If I could handle this work again, I’d probably find some way to clamp the glass to the foam on either side of the stringer opening. After cutting out the rotten t-band and drying the board inside for months, the glass delaminated a bit on one side. I’m not worried about this repair, really. But it might have been avoided with a couple clamps. I now understand why David Platt has about a dozen clamps on the nose of the Gordon Woods during a delamination repair. (That’s one difference between an amateur and a professional!)
The stringer replacement is, without a doubt, the most challenging part of this rehabilitation project. It may be a long road from here to the swell, but it’s all downhill!
Read Part I — A Documentary in Words and Images
